Add shell hooks

[reddec]

Adds shell hooks via environment variables FLATNOTES_HOOK_<name>.

• FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE - executes once note created
• FLATNOTES_HOOK_UPDATE - executes once note updated
• FLATNOTES_HOOK_DELETE - executes once note removed

In each option, %s will be replaced by path to note. Work dir is set to notes dir.

It opens opportunity to enable syncs. For example:

FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE="git add -A && git commit -m 'note %s' && git push"
FLATNOTES_HOOK_UPDATE="$FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE"
FLATNOTES_HOOK_DELETE="$FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE"

[dullage]

Thanks for the PR, I like the concept.

I'm tied up on other projects at the minute but will take a look as soon as I can.

[reddec]

@dullage thanks! Any updates?

[clach04]

lgtm - I've not tested this out but when I first saw this project this first thing I wondered was would this fit into my existing git backed notes directory.

A later change may need to deal with error reporting to the UI, so the user knows something happened. For example with git, if a conflict has taken place and need manual merging.

[clach04]

👍 thanks for doc'ing this. I was thinking about experimenting with this so this will help!

[clach04]

Pedantic suggestion; recommend moving this to the line above to have pep-8 sorting. I know the existing code isn't strictly adhering to this. https://pypi.org/project/isort/ can help with this.

[clach04]

Recommend a new section to provide a demo like you did in the PR.

Alternative suggestion for git, sample. 100% Untested :-) I used this technique in some of my (shell) scripts I removed the git add -A to also handle deletes and possible renames (rename detection can be a little hit and miss)

FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE="git add -u :/ ; git add . && git commit -m 'note %s' && git push"
FLATNOTES_HOOK_UPDATE="$FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE"
FLATNOTES_HOOK_DELETE="$FLATNOTES_HOOK_CREATE"

[clach04]

Possibly dumb question; Should this include --ignore-pipfile?

flatnotes/Dockerfile

Line 50 in 5b5369b

RUN pipenv install --deploy --ignore-pipfile --system && \

uses it.

From https://pipenv.pypa.io/en/latest/commands.html#install

--ignore-pipfile — Install from the Pipfile.lock and completely ignore Pipfile information.

[reddec]

A bit confused: @dullage == @clach04 ?

[clach04]

A bit confused: @dullage == @clach04 ?

No, we are different people. I'm just a drive-by commenter who liked your PR ;-)

[dullage]

Sorry for the late reply. I have a few concerns with the current approach but hopefully a potential solution for them.

1. The repo is laid out in a way which could (in the future) support different backends for note storage, attachment storage and authentication. For note storage, currently, the only option is file_system but this may change in the future and if it does, the shell hook code would need to be duplicated.
2. Responses need to wait for the shell hook to complete, potentially slowing down the client.
3. I haven't tested this one, but my suspicion is that if the shell hook errors, the API would return an error to the client even though the actual note task completed successfully.

To solve these, my suggestion is to look into the [Background Tasks)(https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/background-tasks/) functionality of FastAPI. You may be able to use this to perform the shell hook after the response has been returned to the client.

Additionally, I think it would also be prudent to wrap the check_call in a try catch with the catch simply logging the error message using logger.error.

[reddec]

@dullage

1. I believe the shell hooks are particularly beneficial when used in conjunction with file storage. For other remote storage solutions (e.g., S3) or databases, hooks can be easily implemented using native tools.
2. This approach is intentional to maintain consistency across user operations. If a hook is executed in the background while another user operation occurs, it could lead to inconsistencies.
3. Related to point 2, it's straightforward to bypass this with || true in the hook.

I completely understand and share your concerns. I apologize for not detailing these points in the PR description earlier. Given the specific use-case example, I couldn't identify a better alternative 🤷‍♂️